Yes, I’m on Facebook … though I rarely update my status there. Most of my Web 2.0 communications are on Twitter (where my Twitter-id is “yourdon”). And my Twitter “network” seems to be a different set of people than the Facebook “network” — one is mostly business/professional colleagues and friends, while the other is family, relatives, personal friends. So while I previously implemented an automatic cross-post of all my Twitter tweets to Facebook, I’ve recently turned it off…

As for the larger question of whether Dijkstra was relevant: as I recall, he died in 2002 or thereabouts, before blogging was widespread. In any case, if he were alive today, his refusal to blog/Twitter/FB would make him irrelevant — at least in the short term — to many younger members of the IT profession. For better or worse, Marshal McLuhan’s statement that “the medium is the message” is a reality. A substantial percentage of the Gen X/Y generation, for example, gets its news about politics and current events from Jon Stewart on the “Daily Show,” not from Brian Williams or the other prime-time news anchors.

Ed

I’ll send a Friend request. I think I’m relevant, since after I turned down a job offer from you in 1980 which I should have taken (teaching methodology in Latin America) I had all sorts of fascinating adventures in computing. I’ve left the field and now I’m a teacher in Hong Kong.

I hope to see you soon.

If you cannot write, Twittering and facebooking will make you look foolish. You and I can write, but there are many illiterate and aliterate people who have important stories.

At the other extreme, many readers of Internet media see complex syntax and instantly decide not to read the post, thereby forming a wrong idea of the poster.

In the old days of American data processing, highly intelligent programmers who could write well (of which in my experience there were many) were misunderstood because they thought their expertise would give them a forum in the typical American, and American-influenced, business meeting.

They did not realize that American businessmen are not fond of the English language, having failed to read Alexis de Tocqueville, or Edmund Wilson on the culture of Ford Motors in the 1930s, despite their intelligence.

They were counseled and mentored, ably and well enough, by such as you and Gerald (Weinberg) to learn “effective communication” as a skill apart from content, but as Dijkstra believed, and I believe, this is foolishness.

Today, their blog is unread, both because of traditional American anti-intellectualism, and because language skills are in rapid decline, not so much because of the Internet as the deliberate destruction of public education in the name of tax cuts.

Was Dijkstra irrevelant? He refused to blog before his untimely death.

…not because I am being anti-social but because the messaging mechanism has become more important than the message. It is what my teenage daughter lives in. She emails some one, then calls to make sure the mail was delivered, then uses SMS and IM and her chess chat room…and of course, FN and other web services – and the message is usually the same – the messaging mechanisms have proliferated

98% of folks who are my LinkedIn contact have never contacted me in the past year or ever…I am a “scalp” in their network…

take the other POV. As privacy becomes so difficult with data losses every day, some people do not want to share things like travel details a la Dopplr. Whatever happened to opt-in? It’s only for spam? There is so much social pressure to join specific web services…

,,,so till some rules of etiquette emerge around our social networks I cannot blame your and my fuddy duddy peers for not joining in…

oh and btw my teenage daughter wishes us fuddy duddy’s stayed out of networks like Facebook -)

Okay, that may be true of Western Union … but I never did depend on them to transfer money, and it would never have occurred to me today. I realize, of course, that it’s an important mechanism for people to transfer funds from the U.S. to various developing nations (I hope that’s a neutral way of stating it)

The point is that I can’t be bothered to remember which friends I should explicitly notify about my travel plans, nor do they remember to notify me … but to the extent that we’re all on Dopplr, it takes care of itself. Sure, we could accomplish the same thing through traditional email — but the point is that we don’t do do so …

Enjoyed your blog!

Just wanted to drop you a quick note to say that although Western Union is no longer sending telegrams, it’s now the world’s largest money-transfer company (with revenue of $4.5 billion in 2006).

(If we’re out of business, I’m in trouble …

I think that’s why Facebook is getting the kind of attention it’s been getting, because it’s the only network where there’s a real chance that just about everyone might be on it, some day.